Almost Paradise

Ruby Clyde Henderson is twelve and responsible beyond her years. She has to be. Her mother is emotionally fragile and prone to unsuitable boyfriends. One such boyfriend takes Ruby Clyde and her mother on an impromptu road trip and ends up involved in the armed robbery of a gas station in Texas. The boyfriend and the mother are both arrested, and Ruby Clyde's care falls to her aunt, a nun who lives on a nearby ranch. There Ruby Clyde experiences stability for the first time in her life, and it is "almost paradise" until she discovers that Aunt Eleanor has cancer. What makes the story sing is our protagonist's voice. She's resilient, vulnerable, alert, honest, and hilarious, sharing her unique take on an unreliable world dotted with moments of joy and the kindness of strangers. Jail smells like "the body odor of people who work in car washes on hot summer days." Literature (Oliver Twist and the Bible) provides ballast and Ruby Clyde's own brand of generous reader response: "Still, Eve wasn't all bad. Adam was a wuss, blaming her, but that wasn't all his fault, God made him weak." There are gems on every page and a dandy Dickensian plot twist involving identical twins. On the stage of memorable middle-grade heroines, Ruby Clyde Henderson stands right beside DiCamillo's India Opal Buloni (Because of Winn-Dixie, rev. 7/00). sarah ellis